Special teams are an often-overlooked aspect of football, but are an important component of winning games. One of the many pieces of value that Pro Football Focus adds to the conversation is our detailed, process-oriented grading of all six phases of special teams. Through this grading, we are able to create lists—like this one of the league’s best special teams players—that are position-specific.
Through a simple, linear model we can show that our special teams grades can account for 19.18 percent of the variability in the number of wins a team earns during the course of a season (from 2013–2016, the seasons for which we have complete set of special teams grades).